The Full Belmonte, 5/8/2023
Muralist Roberto Marquez and his friend, Israel Gil, erect a memorial to honor the victims of the mass shooting in Allen, Texas.
Texas shooting
“Eight people were killed and at least seven others were wounded when a gunman opened fire at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, on Saturday — the latest mass shooting to shatter an American community. A Dallas-area medical group said it was treating patients ranging from age from 5 to 61 years old. The 33-year-old shooter was killed by a police officer who was already at the mall near Dallas on an unrelated call. The gunman was armed with an AR-15 style rifle and had multiple weapons in his vehicle, according to police. The shooter's motive remains unclear at this time, but officials are investigating his potential ties to right-wing extremism after he was found with an insignia on his clothing worn by some members of extremist groups, a law enforcement source said. Officials have also found he had an extensive social media presence that included neo-Nazi and White supremacist-related posts.” [CNN]
Immigration
“The US is expecting to see an influx of border crossings when Title 42, the Trump-era policy that allowed officials to swiftly expel migrants who crossed the border illegally during the Covid-19 pandemic, expires on Thursday. Without Title 42, the primary border enforcement tool since March 2020, authorities will be returning to decades-old protocols at a time of unprecedented mass migration in the region, raising concerns within the Biden administration about a surge in the immediate aftermath of the policy's lifting. Also on Thursday, the House is set to vote on Republicans' wide-ranging border security package, GOP leadership sources told CNN. Last month, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Republicans have the necessary votes to pass the legislation in the chamber.” [CNN]
“At least eight people are dead and nine more injured after an SUV ran into a group of people waiting for a bus near the Ozanam Center, a shelter for migrants in Brownsville, Texas. The driver is in custody and police are investigating whether the incident was intentional. The shelter is five miles from encampments in Matamoros, Mexico, where migrants wait as pandemic-era border restrictions known as Title 42 are set to expire this week.” [CNN]
Emergency personnel respond to a fatal collision in Brownsville, Texas, on Sunday, May 7, 2023. Several migrants were killed after they were struck by a vehicle while waiting at a bus stop near Ozanam Center, a migrant and homeless shelter.
Michael Gonzalez, AP
Yellen warns against using the 14th Amendment in debt limit fight
“Some officials in the White House are discussing the prospect of essentially declaring the debt ceiling unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, the New York Times reports. As brinksmanship over the debt ceiling continues and the U.S. barrels towards defaulting on its debts as early as June 1, it is unclear whether the White House would proceed with such a move if the U.S. gets closer to its deadline without hard progress on the current debt ceiling negotiations. But Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned against invoking the 14th amendment, saying such a move could result in a ‘constitutional crisis.’” Read more at USA Today
Trump rejects last chance to testify at New York civil trial
By LARRY NEUMEISTER
“NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump rejected his last chance Sunday to testify at a civil trial where a longtime advice columnist has accused him of raping her in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996.
Trump, a Republican candidate for president in 2024, was given until 5 p.m. Sunday by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to file a request to testify. Nothing was filed.
It was not a surprise. Trump has not shown up once during the two-week Manhattan trial where writer E. Jean Carroll testified for several days, repeating claims she first made publicly in a 2019 memoir. She is seeking compensatory and punitive damages totaling millions of dollars.
The jury has also watched lengthy excerpts from an October videotaped deposition in which Trump vehemently denied raping Carroll or ever really knowing her.
Without Trump’s testimony, lawyers were scheduled to make closing arguments Monday, with deliberations likely to begin on Tuesday.
After plaintiffs rested their case Thursday, Trump attorney Joe Tacopina immediately rested the defense case as well without calling any witnesses. He did not request additional time for Trump to decide to testify. Tacopina declined in an email to comment after the deadline passed Sunday.
On Thursday, Kaplan had given Trump extra time to change his mind and request to testify, though the judge did not promise he would grant such a request to reopen the defense case so Trump could take the stand.
At the time, Kaplan noted that he’d heard about news reports Thursday in which Trump told reporters while visiting his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, that he would ‘probably attend’ the trial. Trump also criticized Kaplan, a Bill Clinton appointee, as an ‘extremely hostile’ and ‘rough judge’ who ‘doesn’t like me very much.’
On the witness stand, Carroll, 79, testified that Trump, 76, raped her in spring 1996 after they met at the entrance of the midtown Manhattan department store Bergdorf Goodman.
She said the encounter began as a fun and flirtatious outing as Trump coaxed her into helping him shop for a gift for another woman. She said they ended up in the store’s desolate lingerie section, where they teased each other to try on a see-through bodysuit.
As Carroll recalled it, laughter accompanied them into a dressing room where Trump became violent, slamming her up against a wall, pulling aside her tights and raping her before she kneed him and fled the store.
In his deposition, Trump said Carroll made it up. He called it ‘a false, disgusting lie’ delivered by a ‘nut job’ who was trying to stoke sales of her book.
He also repeated comments he made in statements that she was not his ‘type.’
‘She’s not my type and that’s 100% true,’ he said.
And he repeated his claims in a 2005 ‘Access Hollywood’ video in which he bragged that men who are celebrities can grab women by the genitals without asking.
‘Historically that’s true with stars,’ he said.
Carroll sued Trump in November, minutes after New York state enacted a law allowing adult sexual assault victims to sue others even if the attacks occurred decades earlier….” Read more at AP News
Measles
“A child in Maine has tested positive for measles, officials said, marking the first case in the state since 2019. Measles was declared eliminated from the US in 2000 thanks to an intensive vaccination program, according to the CDC. But vaccination rates in the US have dropped in recent years, sparking new outbreaks. The CDC recommends all children get two doses of the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine; the first dose between 12 to 15 months of age and the second between the ages of 4 to 6. The child who tested positive had received the measles vaccine, but is being considered ‘infectious out of an abundance of caution,’ the Maine CDC said. There have been a total of 10 documented cases of measles in eight states this year.” [CNN]
Alarm after lawyer who aided Trump’s 2020 election lie attacks campus voting
Rightwing lawyer Cleta Mitchell faces criticism after comments to GOP donors urging new rules to make voting harder for students
Cleta Mitchell speaks at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, on 1 April 2022. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP
“Rightwing election lawyer Cleta Mitchell, a key ally of Donald Trump as he pushed bogus claims of fraud to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 win, is facing intense fire from voting watchdogs and bipartisan criticism for urging curbs on college student voting, same day voter registration and absentee voting.
The scrutiny of Mitchell, who runs the Election Integrity Network at the pro-Trump Conservative Partnership Institute to which a Trump Pac donated $1m dollars, was sparked by recent comments Mitchell made to Republican donors, and a watchdog report criticizing her advisory role with a federal election panel.
Long known for advocating stricter voting rules that are often premised on unsupported allegations of sizable voting fraud, Mitchell last month promoted new voting curbs on students in a talk to a group of wealthy donors to the Republican National Committee, efforts that critics call partisan and undemocratic.
Mitchell’s private RNC address to rich donors zeroed in on curbing college campus voting rules, automatic mailing of ballots to registered voters and same-day voter registration, as the Washington Post first reported.
The talk by Mitchell, who has done legal work for Republican committees, members of Congress and conservative groups such as the National Rifle Association, focused on college campuses in key swing states including Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Virginia and Wisconsin, all of which have large college campuses.
In an audio of her remarks obtained by liberal journalist Lauren Windsor, Mitchell slammed college voting procedures.
‘What are these college campus locations? What is this young people effort that they do? They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed.’
Further in one part of her presentation cited by the Post, Mitchell charged blithely that ‘the Left has manipulated the electoral systems to favor one side … theirs. Our constitutional republic’s survival is at stake.’
It’s unclear if the RNC will back the latest proposals made by Mitchell, who the committee has worked with previously. But an RNC spokesperson offered effusive praise of Mitchell to the Post, saying: ‘As the RNC continues to strengthen our Election Integrity program, we are thankful for leaders like Cleta Mitchell who do important work for the Republican ecosystem.’
But voting rights watchdogs voice alarm at Mitchell’s proposals to the RNC donor crowd.
‘Mitchell’s comments behind closed doors give up the game,’ said Danielle Lang, the lead voting rights litigator with the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. ‘The current wave of additional voter restrictions is about only one thing: punishing disfavored populations of voters.’
Lang added: ‘Sadly, we should not be surprised that Mitchell, who was central to attempts to overturn the will of the people in 2020, speaks so blithely about attacking voters she dislikes.’
Similarly, Republicans and Democrats alike deplore Mitchell’s comments to the RNC contributors.
‘It’s absurd for Cleta Mitchell or others to suggest our path to victory is by making it harder for young people to vote,’ said ex-Republican congressman Charlie Dent. ‘Republicans should not fear how people vote. Good candidates with good messages should resonate with voters.’
Key Democrats agree.
‘Mitchell seems to have a very difficult time separating her partisan agenda from the responsibility we all have to uphold a basic democratic respect for the right to vote,’ Democrat House member Jamie Raskin told the Guardian.
Mitchell didn’t respond to a Guardian request for comment about her RNC remarks.
Besides the firestorm over Mitchell’s RNC remarks, she is facing more heat related to other recent efforts she has made to restrict voting rights.
Mitchell has served for over a year on a bipartisan advisory board for the federal Election Assistance Commission, a post that she’s used to promote curbs on mail in voting, voter registration and student voting, according to an April report from the watchdog group American Oversight.
American Oversight’s study, which came after it obtained Mitchell emails from 2020- 2022 using the Freedom of information Act, included some exchanges where Mitchell suggested legal challenges to absentee voting rules and attacked a voting rights group while serving on the EAC advisory board.
‘Cleta Mitchell played a central role in former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election,’ said American Oversight executive director Heather Sawyer ‘So it isn’t surprising that she has used her role as an advisor to the Election Assistance Commission to push an explicitly anti-voting agenda.’
‘She has disparaged voting rights organizations, called for challenging absentee voting procedures, and is urging new rules that would make voting harder for students and working people. Mitchell’s partisan and ideological commitment to restricting ballot access has no place at an agency tasked with helping states administer free and fair elections.’
The fears over Mitchell’s blunt advocacy for curbing student and other voting rights, comes after her role advising Trump as he tried to overturn Biden’s win in 2020 has received legal scrutiny in Georgia. It also comes amid criticism of aggressive poll watching drives she pushed for in 2022 through her Election Integrity Network.
Mitchell was subpoenaed last year, along with several other key Trump lawyers and allies including Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, by a special grand jury in Georgia in a wide ranging criminal probe by Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis into efforts by Trump and his allies to thwart Biden’s win in the state.
A major focus of that inquiry is Trump’s hour-long conference call on 2 January 2021, which Mitchell participated in, pressuring Georgia’s Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to just ‘find’ him 11,780 votes to block Biden’s win there.
Trump falsely claimed that ‘we won by hundreds of thousands of votes’ and vaguely warned Raffensperger of a ‘criminal offense’ to which the Georgia official replied ‘the data you have is wrong’.
The Fulton county inquiry is widely expected to lead to several indictments including quite possibly Trump, and Willis has said she will make final decisions about who will be charged this summer….” Read more at The Guardian
Wagner Leader Reverses Course on Plan to Withdraw From Bakhmut
Yevgeny Prigozhin said his decision came after Russian military officials pledged fresh supplies and operational freedom
In an image taken from a video released by Prigozhin Press Service last week, Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Wagner Group, stands with his troops in an unknown location. PHOTO: PRIGOZHIN PRESS SERVICE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“The leader of Russian paramilitary group Wagner said he has reversed his decision to fully withdraw from the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut after pledges from Russian military officials to provide more ammunition and operational freedom to Wagner units that he said had sustained tens of thousands of casualties.
The statement on Sunday by Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s founder and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, came the day after he reiterated his plan to withdraw all Wagner troops from the front lines by May 10, saying that ‘after seven months of the Bakhmut meat-grinder the Wagner Group has lost its combat potential.’
On Sunday morning, Mr. Prigozhin announced that the Defense Ministry had pledged to supply Wagner with all of the arms and ammunition necessary to continue its campaign in Bakhmut, and said General Sergei Surovikin, who was removed in January from his post as Russia’s top commander in Ukraine, would mediate between Wagner and the Defense Ministry.
Wagner has spearheaded Russia’s offensive in Bakhmut, which Ukrainian forces are clinging to after months of brutal combat that has taken a heavy toll on both sides, relying largely on convicts recruited from Russian prisons. The White House estimated this week that about half of the 20,000 Russian troops killed in Ukraine since December were from Wagner.
But the campaign in Ukraine and Mr. Prigozhin’s very active presence on social media promoting Wagner’s work have exposed major rifts in Russia’s military command, with Mr. Prigozhin openly criticizing Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of general staff of Russia’s armed forces.
The new flare-up of tensions within Russia’s military machine involving Mr. Prigozhin follows a spate of drone attacks on Russian soil this week. The strikes, which have mainly targeted infrastructure used to sustain Moscow’s war effort such as trains, airfields and fuel depots, have put the Kremlin on the back foot ahead of what Western analysts say is an imminent Ukrainian offensive.
Authorities in Russian-held Crimea said more than 10 drones attacked the peninsula overnight into Sunday, including the strategic Black Sea port city of Sevastopol.
Yevgeny Prigozhin. PHOTO: WAGNER GROUP/PRESS POOL
Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Russian-installed governor of the region, said air-defense forces and electronic warfare repelled the attack. One drone lost control and crashed in a forest belt, while two others were shot down over the Black Sea, Mr. Razvozhayev said.
Mr. Razvozhayev said there were no reports of damage, including in Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. The incidents follow another reported drone attack on Crimea on Saturday. Kyiv hasn’t claimed responsibility for the attacks, but many experts see the assaults as part of the preparations for the widely anticipated Ukrainian offensive.
On Wednesday, two drones crashed into the Kremlin, according to the Russian government, which blamed Kyiv for the attack in the heart of Moscow. The incident sent a glaring signal to Russia about its vulnerability.
The strikes come days before Russia is set to mark Victory Day, the annual May 9 celebration of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Mr. Putin is expected to use the holiday to rally support for the war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia continued rocket strikes against Ukraine into Sunday. In the southern Kherson region, authorities said six people had been killed as a result of missile attacks on Saturday and into Sunday. In Mykolaiv, north of Kherson, the regional Gov. Vitaliy Kim said five ship-launched missiles struck an industrial sector and damaged buildings there.” [Wall Street Journal]
“Vilified as terrorists by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Kurdish politicians have emerged as kingmakers in an opposition bid to unseat the Turkish president and could become a legislative force after a cliffhanger election that risks creating a hung parliament. For Turkey’s $900 billion economy, the political jigsaw that takes shape after May 14 will be critical to navigating what’s likely a period of great volatility for the local currency and markets.
Turkish opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu was pelted with stones at a rally and blamed the attack on Erdogan’s ruling party.” [Bloomberg]
“Chile’s opposition dealt another electoral blow to leftist President Gabriel Boric, winning the most seats on a council that’s charged with drafting a new constitution. Boric rose to power on the back of a wave of social unrest with pledges of a progressive agenda enshrined in a new charter, but his plans look in doubt after leftist candidates lost out in yesterday’s voting to an ultra-conservative party, suggesting the country is steering back to the right.” [Bloomberg]
Hungary fuels GOP agenda
Photo illustration: Shoshana Gordon/Axios. Photos: Amir Levy, Spencer Platt, Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images
“The far-right populism of Hungary’s prime minister is helping inspire U.S. Republicans' agenda for '24 — a game plan that targets immigration, LGBTQ rights and, at least for some, the war in Ukraine, Axios' Sophia Cai writes.
Why it matters: Hungary's Viktor Orbán, 59, is something of a godfather to the most conservative elements of the GOP. His harsh policies on immigrants, transgender people, voting rights and other issues have encouraged U.S. conservatives to push for similar laws.
Since Orbán was elected in 2010, he has reshaped Hungary's democracy — changing election laws to make it more difficult to oust him, and using racially tinged, divisive rhetoric to inspire his most dedicated supporters.
He also has become close to Russia's Vladamir Putin, is a critic of aid to help Ukraine fight off Russia's invasion — and is a favorite speaker at CPAC, the U.S. conservative conference, which met this week in Budapest.
What we're watching: Trump, his advisers and others in MAGA world have been supportive of Orbán.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis met with Hungarian president and close Orbán ally Katalin Novák last month.” [Axios]
ChatGPT
“ChatGPT, a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence, can pick stocks better than your fund manager, analysts say. A recent experiment found that the bot far outperformed some popular UK investment funds — and funds managed by HSBC and Fidelity were among those selected. Between March and April, a dummy portfolio of 38 stocks gained 4.9% while 10 leading investment funds clocked an average loss of 0.8%, the results showed. The analysts asked ChatGPT to select stocks based on some common criteria, including picking companies with a low level of debt and a track record of growth. Microsoft, Netflix and Walmart were among the companies selected. While major funds have used AI for years to support their investment decisions, analysts say ChatGPT has put the technology in the hands of the general public — and it's showing it can possibly disrupt the finance industry.” [CNN]
Many Americans are being priced out of new cars.
“The numbers: The average price for a new car hit $48,008 in March, up 30% from March 2020. The average monthly car payment hit $730 last month.
Why this is happening: Rising interest rates have made loans more expensive. And carmakers have largely abandoned cheaper models because of a chip shortage.” [Washington Post]
SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETIC
“N.B.A. playoffs: The Philadelphia 76ers tied their series last night, defeating the Boston Celtics, 116-115. And the Phoenix Suns are now tied with the Denver Nuggets in their series.
Bumped: But all eyes were on the Phoenix owner Mat Ishbia, who got into a courtside tussle with Nikola Jokic.
Red Bull battle: Max Verstappen won the Miami Grand Prix.
Race winner Max Verstappen of the Netherlands and Oracle Red Bull Racing celebrates on the podium during the F1 Grand Prix of Miami at Miami International Autodrome on May 07, 2023 in Miami, Florida.
Chris Graythen, Getty Images
Leafs in trouble: After winning a first playoff series in nearly two decades, the Toronto Maple Leafs find themselves in another dire situation, down 3-0 to the Florida Panthers.” [New York Times]
“Lives Lived: Vida Blue threw an unhittable fastball as a rookie with the Oakland Athletics in 1971 and became baseball’s hottest player. Blue died at 73.” [New York Times]